Friday the 13th: Jason Blum Still Hopes to Revive Franchise With James Wan

Producer Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions have revived dormant properties with a Halloween trilogy and with last year’s The Exorcist: Believer, with Blum once again expressing his desire to resurrect Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise. One behind-the-scenes change since the last time he expressed such an interest is that Blum has partnered with James Wan’s Atomic Monster, with these most recent comments seeing him express excitement over getting Wan involved in the process of developing a new entry. Sadly, while Blum’s enthusiasm for the property will surely excite audiences, there’s a lot more factors at play that would prevent such a revival from happening.

“Friday the 13th is what I would do,” Blum shared with Collider when asked about the next poperty he wants to revive. “It’s not a Blumhouse project, but I’m trying to will it into being one. It’s just a piece of IP I’ve always loved.”

While both Halloween and The Exorcist came back to life courtesy of David Gordon Green, Blum shared of a possible Friday the 13th project, “And James Wan and Atomic Monster are very passionate about it, and I think we would have them shepherd it for us. That would be a lot of fun.”

The last entry in the series arrived in 2009 and was a reboot of the first three chapters in the series, which marked the 12th installment in the franchise since 1980. That film failed to ignite much interest in the franchise, which is only one reason why we’ve had to wait so long for a new entry. A new take on the material from filmmaker David Bruckner was in the works, though it was cancelled close to the start of production. Complicating the overall future of the concept is a legal dispute between original director Sean S. Cunningham and original writer Victor Miller.

Given the popularity of the franchise, Miller sought to earn the rights for the franchise from Cunningham, who had created the title of the original film and hired Miller to write the script. With the concept of Jason Voorhees being a masked murderer who had returned from beyond not being established until after that debut entry, the dispute between the pair centered around who owns the rights to the characters and the titles, and who then was entitled to the profits of the series. 

As the dispute is still ongoing, there are no plans with any studio to move forward with a new entry.

Would you like to see Blum revive the concept with Wan? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!